


Laughing in the Rain

by von_gelmini



Series: Inspired by Starker-Sorbet's Moodboards [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, College Student Peter Parker, Fluff, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Meet-Cute, Rom-Com Sappy Sweet, romantic af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:01:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gelmini/pseuds/von_gelmini
Summary: The kid blushed and looked down at their feet standing bare toe to white rubber Converse toe. “You shouldn’t tell people they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’ll believe you,” he added quietly.Another for the Starker-Sorbet moodboard inspired collection. :)Run over here to look at the fantastic moodboard first. This story will make so much more sense with it. (I hope.)Rainy Day Starker. Click on this link to see it full sized and so much better.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Series: Inspired by Starker-Sorbet's Moodboards [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571071
Comments: 10
Kudos: 242
Collections: Starker Fics by Egg





	Laughing in the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Don't even try to make sense of the timelines. Jarvis is still around because he is. Pepper is still Tony's PA because she is. The house in Malibu still drowned because it did. I don't even know... I just write what they tell me to write.
> 
> And yeah, maybe I recycled a favorite line or two of mine from other stories. They're favorites, okay? I like them!

“Temperature, JARVIS?” Tony said excitedly as he woke up, sometime around two in the afternoon.

“Ninety-six degrees, sir.”

“How long is the rain expected to last?”

“At least an hour.”

Tony grinned, pulling on only a white t-shirt and jeans.

“Oh no, you are not!” Pepper said, trying to stop her boss from heading out the door for the elevator, unshowered, unshaved, and completely unpresentable to the world… and _barefoot._ “We are not in California!”

“Exactly!” Tony said excitedly. “How often does _this_ happen? Rhetorical, J! I don’t care. It hasn’t happened since we came here.”

“Byeeeee,” Tony said, squee-ing like an excited child.

Outside was filled with miserable people being miserable in what was a glorious summer shower. Tony walked through the rain, smiling, unconcerned with the fact that he was soaked through. The rain was wonderful in California. Here? In dirty grimy New York? It was always cold and grey. But today it was magnificent. It washed everything bad in the city away. There was nothing but the scent of ionized air whenever a lightning bolt landed on some shielded skyscraper spire. No risk of being hit by it down here on street level.

The wind whipping up just enough to cool on a still incredibly hot day. Even though he was right outside the building with his name plastered in giant letters on the side, no one would recognize him. Tony Stark didn’t go running out into the rain with nothing but a plain white t-shirt and a sodden pair of jeans on. Not even a pair of shoes. His hair weighed down by the water streaming over it. A ridiculous smile plastered on his face. 

Unfortunately the base of Stark Tower just happened to be on one of the busiest streets of New York. So the madman in the rain was bumped into and cursed and told he was a fool. And none of it mattered. The rain felt wonderful. Fuck all of them for not enjoying it. 

“Some of us are trying to get to class, y’know.” The words were bitter but the tone amused. 

Tony turned around to see an umbrella-less young man as drenched as himself. His hair streamed down over his face, water dripping off of it, dripping off of his nose. Tony couldn’t help laughing. “You look like a drowned rat.” He took the young man in again. His sleeveless denim shirt revealing lean muscular arms running wet with rain. He laughed again. _“We_ look like drowned rats.”

The kid chuckled. “You’re crazy.”

“Uh huh. But how many hot days do we get here when it rains and doesn’t turn cold during it?” He wriggled his toes in a forming puddle. He kicked some of the water onto the kid’s shoes. 

“Not many,” the kid admitted, grinning down at his soaking shoes. 

“Exactly!” 

They were bumped into and told to get out of the middle of the sidewalk, which as New Yorkers, they should’ve known better. Tony grabbed the kid by his arms and moved him closer to the windows that went all the way up to the top of his tower. He didn’t want to let go. He ran his hands, their way slicked by the rain, up the kid’s biceps until he reached out and brushed his wet hair from his face.

“You’re beautiful.”

The kid smiled indulgently and shook his head. “You’re rain-drunk.”

“Nope. I’ve been rain-drunk and drunk drunk and every kind of drunk in between. You’re beautiful.”

The kid blushed and looked down at their feet standing bare toe to white rubber Converse toe. “You shouldn’t tell people they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’ll believe you,” he added quietly.

“I don’t know about ‘they’ but _you_ should believe me.” Tony closed the distance between them and pressed a light kiss on the kid’s lips. Feeling nothing but surprise and then yielding, he took the kiss home.

When they broke for breath, Tony drew a ridiculous Valentine heart on the rain-dripping steamy windows of the tower. “Go out with me.”

“We just met in the rain…”

“Can you think of a better place to meet?” Tony leaned his head against the window, looking at the kid. “When everything that’s wrong… with the city… with humanity… with the world… gets washed away and all that’s left is…” he reached out and touched the kid’s face again, catching the rain on his finger as it ran down his chin. “All that’s left is what’s real? Go out with me,” he asked again.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Tony. What’s yours?”

“Peter.”

“Go out with me, Peter.”

Peter laughed. “Go out with a crazy man who plays in the rain?”

“Uh huh. Give me your phone.”

Peter shielded his cheap phone from the rain with his hand. He was surprised it still functioned after being in his drenched pocket.

“Crazy Man Playing In The Rain,” Tony typed, followed by his most personal number.

“Call me. Go out with me. You’re beautiful,” Tony said, grinning like a fool.

Peter traced a heart on the window only a little bit away from Tony’s. “Okay.”

~~~~~

It was ridiculous. Things like that happened in the spur of the moment. The moment broke and they were gone. They should only be a pleasant memory. Hoping to extract more from it than that… it was ridiculous.

When Peter got home, he stuck his phone into a bag of rice. It still worked, but better safe than sorry. He woke up for school the next day. The rain was gone and only the sweltering, too humid heat remained. He put his books in his backpack, hoping he wouldn’t be late for class again. He didn’t have the convenient excuse of a rainstorm. Before he left, he pulled his phone out of the rice and put it into his pocket.

After his last morning class, he went to text his friend, Ned, about lunch. The screen was still on his contacts list. “Crazy Man Playing In The Rain” Peter smiled. He was older than him, but he was what he kept calling Peter: beautiful. His former text forgotten, he sent something quickly, too quickly to regret it, off to Tony’s number. 

**_I get out of class at four. Meet you where we met before at five. Can’t promise rainstorm. But if you smile at me like that_ **

Peter hit send but couldn’t finish the line. All he could see was Tony’s face, running with water, grinning at him and telling him he was beautiful. 

**_I’ll go out with you_ ** he finished the thought, hitting send again.

“You could be asking a serial killer out on a date,” MJ warned him very practically when he told her and Ned over lunch about his encounter.

“I think it’s romantic,” Ned countered.

“Disgusting,” MJ countered back. “Life isn’t a rom com Peter, even if you do look like a gay version of a rom com heroine.”

“Uh… thanks? I think?” Peter said skeptically. “He probably won’t even show. It was a moment. That’s all. He’s probably married and has a dozen kids and…”

“Dude, married guys with a dozen kids don’t stop guys like you and tell them they’re beautiful.”

MJ rolled her eyes. “The closeted straight guy picking up a pretty twink is practically a trope.”

“Stop,” Peter said. “He was nice. It was a nice moment. He’ll probably not even be there. It’ll be one of those missed connection things.”

“That always lead to happily ever after before the credits roll,” Ned said.

“That always lead to somebody trapped in a basement somewhere being dismembered, before a ghastly sequel is made.”

Peter laughed. “At least I have the two extremes to put myself in between.”

An entire swarm of butterflies decided to take up residence in his stomach as he got off at the Grand Central stop. He was looking down at his phone, at the unreturned text he sent, when he bumped into someone. He looked up.

“Oh god. Excuse me Mr. Stark.” The man, even dressed down, was instantly recognizable. His hair was perfectly done, his beard perfectly trimmed. He was probably the most famous, the most recognizable face in New York. 

But then he smiled.

“Peter,” Tony said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show up.”

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony smiled and Peter’s world lit up. The man fished his fingers into Peter’s pocket and took out his phone. 

“No.”

Tony scrolled through Peter’s contacts list and handed the phone back to him.

“You can’t be…”

“Why not?” He leaned his shoulder against the window. 

“Because! You just… can’t!”

Tony smiled and laughed, high pitched and utterly ridiculous. “Why not, Peter?” He reached out and brushed aside an unruly curl from the kid’s forehead. “You’re beautiful.”

“I didn’t recognize you!”

“I guess not,” Tony said with a quick chuckle. “I’d just gotten up and, much to the chagrin of my PA, refused to get ‘properly’ dressed before going out.” He paused. “If we were in Malibu in the rain, I’m not sure _any_ clothes would’ve been added. And she always _hates_ that.” 

He smiled again. That _so_ wasn’t fair. The way his eyes twinkled and the deep lines formed around his face. And he was dressed so _normal_ looking. A faded old band t-shirt this time instead of plain white, a pair of jeans… “At least you’re wearing shoes,” Peter said smiling back at Tony after he took in the look of him.

“I can walk barefoot on hot sand on the beach, but I draw the line at putting my bare feet on a hot New York street unless it’s been washed clean by the rain.”

“Been missing home?”

“Yeah, a bit. But home got kinda drowned.”

“I read.”

Tony shrugged. “I’ll rebuild… eventually. But I’m here in New York for the foreseeable.”

“You asked me to go out with you?” Peter said, incredulously.

“Yeah. there’s a diner three blocks over that I absolutely love. Best cheeseburgers in the city.”

Peter smiled. “Not some ritzy restaurant?” 

“Oh god no. Don’t make me eat rich people food.”

“You are a rich people.”

“I don’t care. Don’t make me eat that shit.”

Peter laughed.

“God you’re beautiful,” Tony said, his features softening.

“You only like me because I’m beautiful?” Peter said, a little hurt.

“Nah, Pete. I also like you because you’re a fuckin’ genius student at Columbia with a 3.95 GPA in chemistry, there on a full ride scholarship after graduating top in his class at Midtown tech.”

Peter’s eyes went wide.

“What? I’m Tony Stark, okay? Being famous sucks nine-tenths of the time, but it does occasionally have its perks. I had to find out who the beautiful boy that I drew a heart for was.” Tony breathed on the window and the heart appeared. “I told them whoever washed this window would be looking for a new job,” he said, reaching out for Peter’s hand.

Peter breathed on the window over where his heart was. “I didn’t know who I was drawing it for.”

“Would you have if you’d known?”

“Probably not. I would’ve never… I mean… you’re you and I’m me…”

“And you’re beautiful. C’mon. You said you’d go out with me.” Tony smiled and pulled on Peter’s hand, leading him down the street. “I’ve been scared to death that someone as beautiful and brilliant as you wouldn’t show and I haven’t eaten all day.”

**Author's Note:**

> My Starker blog on tumblr is [starker-stories](https://starker-stories.tumblr.com/).  
> Come on by and visit.


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